Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

With the coming release of Affinity Publisher I don't expect there will be any more updates/fixes for the legacy PagePlus programs. Thus, as operating systems/hardware is updated there will come a time when PagePlus people will be out of luck. Telling them to keep using their existing PagePlus stuff is not, in my opinion, good customer service. They are and have been a customer, encourage them to upgrade and move to the Affinity product by providing an open/import function for the old files. It may not exactly handle 100% of the features of PP, but if it covers say 90% that is a lot better than having to start at square one and re-create an old layout.

My experience has been that software publishers usually provide a way to open/import their own previous file formats, but also those of their competitors, so as to bring in the largest customer base possible. Serif may not want to provide for competitive file formats (for which they would have to discover the file structure) but they certainly know the file structure of .ppp files. To open/import a .ppp file and create, for example, an 8 page side fold document, to be printed on letter size paper in landscape oriention, with 0.5" margins all sides, and text boxes of certain sizes in certain places, containing text in certain font, color, size, and certain pictures in certain places at certain sizes would be a big step in the right direction. As this old document is going to be updated, you change and reformat the text as needed, and change the pictures, but the basic layout is in place and you can tweak things as needed. Easier and faster than opening the old document on one screen, and step by step recreating it on another screen manually looking at old properties, inputting property values in the new document and copy/paste the old text into the new. I did this with several documents that had been created in Microsoft Word and I wanted to have new versions in PagePlus x9. It is very labor intensive.

I urge Serif to rethink their position in this matter. I think the benefit would outweigh the cost, and keep a lot of existing customers in the fold!

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I've been a dedicated user of Page Plus since its Beta days ( & that's a very long time ). So, I have hundreds of Page Plus files. Unless I've missed something in the Beta, I can't find any way to open or import them directly into Affinity designer. This does make continuity for your loyal users rather difficult. Please help :-)

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I've been using PagePlus since version 3 and still use PagePlux X6 (didn't update to newer versions because it does all I need) and have accumulated a lot of PagePlus X6 documents. Of course I wonder why a new product comes with import filters for foreign file formats, but without Serif's own format for backward compability. Just tried to import a pdf document created with PagePlus X6 into the public beta running under Win 7. Works mainly ok, but currently images are replaced by image placeholders and 'replacing' the images adds them to the placeholder position, but doesn't use the correct width and height respectively keep the aspect ratio.

Any chance that xml files (PagePlus ppp files renamed to zip and then extracted to xml) can be imported?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums . Although PagePlus files are Serif's own format we have looked at what is involved and this is not straightforward and our limited time is unlikely to be well spent doing PagePlus "import" (which is what it would be as PagePlus and Affinity Publisher share no code whatsoever)..

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I have installed your new program (beta) and tried to open it as a user of Serif for years. Unfortunately without success, so the program is removed again. Is not very customer friendly to Serif users for many years to experience that in a new program to replace Serif Pageplus years long users just be forgotten. Apparently Serif has forgotten that by these users they may now have the possibility to make a better and newer program. Opening other formats without a problem, but ppp files are not important enough and have to go through a detour. A nice way apparently to appreciate your old users.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Sorry but the PDF is a visual print only format and there are no text frames let alone a concept of linked text frames, so I agree this is not an ideal interchange format. We have looked into improving the PDF import but automatically linked frames maybe a step too far

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

In the past 15 years my organisation has built up a huge archive of Pageplus templates, both centrally and across 100's of branches and 300+ individual users. We would be very reluctant to either abandon these or devote the resources to reproduce them in Publisher, as we were forced to when we made the painful transition from Adobe Pagemaker to PagePlus.

Most likely we will struggle along with PagePlus for the next few years, before eventually examining all the available alternatives. It's a shame, because we've been generally impressed with what we've seen in the beta. If Publisher was able to import PagePlus files we would probably be looking to buy several hundred copies over the next year.

(And before anyone says it, yes I know Publisher does an OK job of importing pdfs - as does PagePlus - but that's not a convenient way to work when your cribbing bits of artwork off several previous jobs, especially for our less experienced infrequent users.)

As others have said, you're chasing a large group of Indesign users who could be persuaded to switch, but seem to be telling loyal Pageplus users that we're not worth the effort of supporting.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I would add my vote to a proper import of .ppp files in the new Publisher product. As you can see, many many loyal customers would love to have this and move their investments to the new platform. Please consider this is a priority, and a fantastic selling opportunity to your existing customer base.

Next up would be import of .indd files!

Michael

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

From the beginning, it is very clear that if Serif wants to be successful in pushing Publisher, they cannot shake off the past and distance themselves from PP. Doing so will mean losing a lot of loyal fans and the product will never take off as they anticipate like AD/AP. The issue is PP was Serif's flagship product and it was and is a damn good product. It does the job beautifully and "Ease of Use" is one of its key features. The general consensuses here is that Serif SHOULD spend time adding support for PP and ID if they want APUB to be a success. Sometimes it is good to forget the past and move on but in this case, the past will be a very useful & important ally. As mentioned, I am sure 100% will users will happily pay for a utility/Plugin/Converter for PP. my 2 cents.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

The problem with opening a PDF file is that if you have large numbers of images, like I do - thousands of them in a book, they are rubbish and there is no link to them so the publication is useless.

I really need to be able to import ppp files as I have exceeded the limits of PP9 with numbers of pages and images, the whole thing stalls and I was hoping the new affinity would solve this problem. There is no way I am going to start over in affinity.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

The issue is PP was Serif's flagship product and it was and is a damn good product.

I had never heard of PagePlus before I saw it mentioned in this forum. Professionals have been using Pagemaker, Quark and InDesign (and Ventura for some extent). Quark and InDesign are the major players in publishing industry.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Please find a way to import PagePlus docs. I've been using it since ver 1 and have loads of x9 docs (many are folded, have personalized tables or are poster sized) I regularly reuse with different content. Converting to a pdf may be a stopgap. Unfortunately, the first one I tried to import I'd made in PPx9 crashed AP. The second one, less complex, was fine.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I had never heard of PagePlus before I saw it mentioned in this forum. Professionals have been using Pagemaker, Quark and InDesign (and Ventura for some extent). Quark and InDesign are the major players in publishing industry.

Well I cannot help you with the fact you have never heard of the product. My points were aimed at those like myself who have been using Serif products in particular PagePlus. Not everyone is a major player or needs to use Adobe products to produce printed matter.

Share on other sites

Unfortunately, the first one I tried to import I'd made in PPx9 crashed AP.

Sorry to hear this. We have not been able to replicate but would like to. Please can you go to the relevant bugs forum (APu Mac or APu Windows) with a PDF file that does this for you we would appreciate it. If the file is sensitive then request a Dropbox URL for upload and we can delete it after we are finished investigating.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums . Although PagePlus files are Serif's own format we have looked at what is involved and this is not straightforward and our limited time is unlikely to be well spent doing PagePlus "import" (which is what it would be as PagePlus and Affinity Publisher share no code whatsoever)..

I'm a software developer of many years and one of my areas was transformation of data from one business format to another.

It has nothing to do with code sharing, it's about logical representation.

You don't share code with adobe, but you allow the import of PSD format in designer and it to your own logical structure to the best you can.